


martyred for the touch of your hand

by natehsewell



Category: The Wayhaven Chronicles (Interactive Fiction)
Genre: Characters quoting books and poetry, F/M, Falling In Love, Interrupted Love Confessions, Nate Sewell Falls In Love With Local Librarian Who's Also His Boss' Daughter? Yes, Nerds in Love, Putting this in the detective tag for the sake of convenience, Rating May Change, Technically she's still the MC -- just not a cop, Tenderness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-12 13:54:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29011599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/natehsewell/pseuds/natehsewell
Summary: “I was…”I love you.“I was thinking of words.”“Words? Tell me.” His grin flashes, lighthearted in his pursuit, as if he’s trying to bring it back into her, too.I love you. You have gutted me.“Words to describe you.”-Collection of oneshots in semi-chronological order featuring Nate Sewell and Rhiannon Hart.
Relationships: Female Detective/Nathaniel "Nate" Sewell, Nathaniel "Nate" Sewell/Original Female Character
Comments: 6
Kudos: 14





	martyred for the touch of your hand

**Author's Note:**

> day one of me trying to drag myself out of a creative slump by my hair. the only thing you technically need to know is Rhiannon isn't a detective, but the general plot still follows canon. very cool very sexy. your honor they're in love.
> 
> this is also free advertisement for the girl who circumnavigated fairyland in a ship of her own making, by catherynne m valente. mouthful of a title, absolute masterpiece of a book.

It is, of course, a matter of her safety. 

At least, that’s what she assumes when Nate arrives at seven on a Sunday morning, tapping lightly on the still-locked doors of the library. An easy target for the Trappers gunning for her blood, as Adam has been so kind to remind her.

She was the only one set to work, given how slow it was on days like this, which she preferred; the blanketed silence, the infinite possibility of being left alone, nothing but herself and the books she cared for with all the grace of a mother. 

And then Nate at _her-_ at the library door, his smile almost apologetic.

(She’d told him once, how she loved it when there was no one else in the building. The sleepy mornings in dewy, gray mid-autumn, when she could exist as herself, in front of herself, in front of nothing but the pages and the halls and the wild peace of it all.)

 _And yet._ She doesn’t mind him, doesn’t mind the way he sits in her space as though he’s always belonged there. She’s always prided herself on how she could exist inside herself comfortably, how her own presence, her own mind, was enough.

But Nate. 

Something she finds herself saying often now. _But Nate, but Nate, but Nate._ His name is a fish hook in the fine skin of her thoughts, reeling her down the strange current her life has taken in the last few months.

Maybe _except_ would be a better word. _But_ is the course-correction of an unwilling apology. _But_ exists in spaces of the silently unwanted. _Yes, but._ Her childhood had been rife with it, with almost, with maybe. _I would love to be there, but._

‘But Nate’ puts him in the bordered, unsteady place of unwanted, something to be wished away, an equivalent of ‘if only,’ and he is none of those things.

_I want to be alone_ except _for Nate,_ she thinks, emphasizing the word, and nods to herself surely.

Except is kinder, and better suited to him. He is the exception, he is exceptional, which is only a few steps away from extraordinary, excellent, especial. He is all of those things and more, the vastness of himself still hidden from her, so many pieces still needing names—but it would be all right. The slow reveal simply gives her more time to find new, better words suited for him, for all his multitudes.

She addresses the tall cart of unsorted books with a gentle smile. Her favorite dictionary is in here, somewhere. She could dig it up, begin a list of words that describe Nathaniel Sewell.

“Here, let me.” His hips and chest brush her back as he takes his place behind the loaded cart, and the bare skin of her shoulders tingles with that slightest touch. “Shall we?”

Attentive. Anticipative. Attractive, of course, but that went without saying. Brilliant. Sometimes bemusing.

“You don’t have to help, you know. It’s alright.” She smiles, tucking herself against his side. She grasps the handle bar, and their palms bump together. 

His hands are lovely, graceful, almost aristocratic in shape. The long, strong fingers of a pianist. Strong hands, set in their shape, their ways, but adaptable enough to hold a dozen instruments, to work themselves tenderly around the wrist of a lover. The tendons flex and sharpen as his grip tightens on the handle, and she flushes, looking away. 

“Maybe I want to.”

“Mr. Sewell, I am _working._ ” She insists, attempting firmness.

Nate, of course, is unswayed, and she skips down the alphabet to S, for _stubborn._

“And it would be remiss of me not to help you, Miss Hart.”

“I wasn’t aware you applied for a job here.”

He makes a broad gesture around the long, empty space. Not a single soul in sight, save for them. “I am, of course, your willing servant in all matters—including this one.”

_He is—_

Captivating. Charismatic. Charming. 

Rhiannon sighs, a poor imitation of pained acceptance. She jerks her head in the direction of the small stepping ladder, resting against the wall. “Fine, you can carry that.” 

Nate looks between her and said ladder, his thick brows drawing into amused confusion as he draws himself to his full height, which leaves her under the line of his shoulders.

A pointed silence and look on her part, and he lets out a warm chuckle, the sound rolling and deep as the slow drip of honey. “Very well,” he nods, taking after it with long grace in his stride. Rhiannon feels it, the way one feels a finger trailing the length of their spine. _Debonair._

The next few minutes pass in comfortable silence, and she sinks into the sweet monotony of repetition. Nate carries her ladder in one hand, and with the other he passes books from the cart for her to stack. They start in the children’s section, putting both thin, plastic-sheened storybooks and heavier, older hardbacks away. They move, a push and pull of maintained ease, effortless in how he moves with her. 

Nate, slotted beside her as though he was always meant to be there. Or perhaps it’s the other way around: she was always meant to be here, their exchanges wordless but complete, a silent regard for each other’s space, each other’s company.

It is effortless to be with him. And what a terrifying thing that is, to sit beside someone and the shape of them fit with the shape of you, to know it will never feel like this again. When he leaves— _and he will leave,_ an inevitability—it is… she is...

She is overwhelmed, somehow, almost dizzy. Feels that strange, dull pressure in her chest like a whetstone for the serrated edge of her thoughts. The undeniable truth: she cannot get used to this. She cannot hold onto him. He will make her feel full, solid, held down to the earth instead of lost in her thoughts, and it will be bliss, and it will be lost. She will feel this exactly once, she knows, she will never find it again, and she cannot—

“What are you thinking about?”

“What?” She jerks up, catching the full force of his gaze. Nate smiles, prying the book she’s clinging to (and she didn’t even realize, didn’t even—) from her with gentle hands, setting it in its place; a shelf near her head, bringing his lovely wrist into view, and she wonders what it would be like to trail her lips down the curve of it. Would he let her? Would he let her keep him? 

He will leave. It will always be like this. _Except._

(Except she loves him.)

Loves. 

She loves him.

What a strange thing.

(She is gutted. He has gutted her softly, with the knife of his kindness.)

“You just seemed deep in thought.” He says gently, breaking their routine to put the books away himself. Her books, the ones she’s mothered, the ones she always shies away from giving, even to the bright-eyed children that rush through her halls. The bursting red cover of one of her favorites sits in his hand.

A girl and her wyverary and the boat they’ll sail upon, with _The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making_ emblazoned in brilliant gold lettering. A girl lost on the wind, a girl lost in Fairyland. They are not so different, not anymore. _"It will all be hard and bloody,"_ she remembers reading, the words sinking in her bones. " _But there will be wonders, too, or else why bring me here at all?”_

He sets it aside with care. He holds them like she holds them. He moves in her space with reverence and respect, and he doesn’t push, and he doesn’t pry when she shies away. He understands, and she wants to cry.

_Decent. He is decent._

Not decent as in acceptable, but decent as in good. Kind. Honorable and trustworthy.

“I was…” _I love you._ “I was thinking of words.”

“Words?” He takes the cart in hand, nudging her lightly, and she follows the motion without complaint. The ladder lays forgotten. She cannot feel her hands.

“Tell me.” His grin flashes, lighthearted in his pursuit, as if he’s trying to bring it back into her, too.

_I love you. You have gutted me._

“Words to describe you.”

“Oh?” 

“I was going in alphabetical order.” She says plainly, her voice lulled for all the crashing waves that shudder in her chest. She wants him to see it, somehow. Maybe she could scream, or pull her hair. He should know there’s something _wrong._

The outsides don’t match the insides. Her skin sits strangely.

She should be wounded. Bleeding.

Nate comes to a stop, and she looks around to find that they’ve made their way to the back of the library, where the lamp lights are dimmer and the morning sun spindles white-gold light through the high windows. “And how far did you get?”

“To _D._ But _S,_ too.”

“ _D_ and then _S_?” 

“I had to skip down, for stubborn.”

Nate barks out a laugh, and his smile splits his face into pure light. The creases next to his eyes deepen, and he’s so alive, so alive she wonders how he doesn’t burn up with it, all that warmth, all that life. He is more human than she will ever be.

“ _D,_ hmm? For what?”

“Debonair. Dazzling. Different. Dependable.” The words are coming faster, spilling out of her before she can stop them. She inhales once, like the gasp of a drowned man, and then slumps beneath the weight of all her feeling. “Decent.”

Nate pauses, staring at her, through her, but the emotion is liquid and she can’t pin it down. Somewhere between wonder and confusion, perhaps, and her chest swells up. “Thank you.” Nate nods, genuine, swallowing hard.

His grin flares wide again, sweet on its delivery. “I should hope you would find me at least decent.”

No, she’s saying it wrong. He’s joking, but she needs him to _know._ She needs him to know it’s here, this _weight_ —he doesn’t need to bear it, but she needs him to know.

“Decent as in _good,_ not as in adequate.”

His smile hesitates, and she— she needs to stop. 

He doesn’t need to know. He doesn’t need to know anything. Rhiannon turns, flushed to the ends of her ears, and blindly takes a stack of books up. She’ll have to walk all over the library, no thought or order, and if she can keep moving, she doesn’t need to meet his eyes.

She’s halfway in the Philosophy section when he comes up behind her. His presence sits at the back of her neck like a brand, his breathing a lulled rhythm her own chest begins to rise and fall with.

Slowly, she turns around, and finds him there, his hands pushed deep into his pockets. 

Something flickers across his face, but she can’t read it. A snappish jealousy shoots through her, thinking of Adam, who knows him so well they can communicate in silence, in gestures. 

She does not have three hundred years to learn the language of his mouth, his eyes, his brow. Which smiles mean what, which frown means anger or disappointment, what he looks like when he’s undone, wholly.

(She could spend a thousand years on the shape of his lips alone, and it still wouldn’t be time enough.)

They examine each other for a moment, and his face relaxes.

Rhiannon exhales, sick to her stomach and alive with the want of him.

“Can I participate?” Nate asks after a moment, a new, softer smile flirting with his mouth, and she remembers why he is the exception. Even here, even now, she clings to the ease of him, and feels it ease her in turn.

She sinks her teeth into her cheek to keep from completely smiling back. He watches her mouth, and his eyes brighten. “Participate?” 

“In your game. I’d like to make my own list of words, if you’ll allow it.“

“I— oh.” Her mind grinds to a halt, her back collapsing into the dull edges of the shelves behind her. “I don’t think I’m interesting enough for that. But I can’t stop you.” 

“I think you’re fascinating.” Nate murmurs, what brutal tenderness, and she crashes into the waves of him. “But that would be going out of order. Let’s see… where were you? _D?”_

He steps forward, and she can’t step back. She isn’t sure she’d want to.

“Yes.” She rasps. 

One of his hands rises, catching on the shelf behind her head. There’s a brief pause, his eyes trailing over her face, watching for something. Reticence, perhaps, or discomfort. When she shows none, his other hand twins, and she’s caught in the loop of his arms.

“Nate…”

She drops the books--two, thin enough to survive the fall--but he catches them. Puts them blindly behind her.

“Dedicated. Determined. Devoted.”

She curls her fingers around the bow of his wrist—lovely, carved and her other hand grasping at the fabric of his shirt. 

“Darling. You are darling, Miss Hart.”

“As in adorable?” She almost laughs, emotions scattering wide at the raw sincerity of him.

His hand, to the apple of her cheek. His thumb brushing beneath her eye, his fingers curling to the back of her head.

He is so beautiful she aches, full with the sight of him.

“As in beloved.”

_I love you._ “Nate…” She whispers, her blood beating hard and fast like the first blossoming of a bruise. She could swear he’s shaking. Or maybe she is, her hand rising to the statuesque curve of his jaw with shaky abandon. _You have gutted me._

He leans down, drawing her forward, into him, and it’s there: she would martyr herself for the touch of his hand.

“Rhiannon, I…”

The rattling bang of a hand crashing down jolts them apart, the world crashing back down again into the cradle they’ve made of their space.

Nate almost— _almost_ snarls, his features crushing into a hard grimace, eyes squeezing shut. But he doesn’t move, and neither does she. Hip to hip, wrist to wrist, his forehead presses down on the crown of her head, and she wants to scream. 

Another bang, and she hisses, her head dropping back against the shelves. 

“I should… I should get that.” _The doors._ The doors are still locked, and technically, technically the library is open.

_Of all the days._

Nate lets her go reluctantly, taking only half a step back to meet the other bookshelf, and she can barely breathe under the expanse of whatever _that_ was. “I’ll be right back,” she mutters, half to herself, and ambles toward the door.

It’s a woman with two apple-cheeked toddlers and a visible weariness in her eyes, and Rhiannon tries not to begrudge her for her very poor timing.

Later. She can tell him later. After they get past the _E’s,_ maybe. _Elegant. Enchanting. Enthralling._

She meets Nate’s eyes across the open mouth of the room, and when he smiles, her chest unfurls; it feels like sunlight, swallowed down.

**Author's Note:**

> hmu @natehsewell on tumblr


End file.
